NavList:

LOL! Wow! That's incredible. You just left out a few details. We practiced this occasionally, not on every mission. We were downstairs in cramped quarters so we really had to be organized and be able to monitor everything else that was going on, throw out the DR, get the DR coordinates off of the chart and start precomping. Try doing that in a dark closet with a vacuum cleaner running to simulate the ambient noise of the Buff. Once you had your precomp done and it was time for the shot, you crawled up the ladder and pulled a metal grate across the hole that you just crawled through. Then you installed the sextant into it's port and cranked in your numbers.

At this point it gets very uncomfortable, the wings are flapping out there making it difficult to collimate. I am 6'2" and the sextant is at about chest level, you cannot stand up straight to begin with in the B-52. I am squatting during the 3 two-minute shots, so my thighs are burning and shaking towards the end of the process.

Finally, stow the sextant, stow the grate, and then crawl back into your hole, strap in and resolve your fix on the chart.

PITA.
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